Boyfriend of woman shot in Dale arrested on drug charges

The boyfriend of the 34-year-old Dale woman gunned down late Sunday night was arrested Monday on drug charges, although authorities are not saying he is a suspect or person of interest in his girlfriend’s death.

Earnest Stewart Daise, 27, was charged with crack cocaine and marijuana trafficking and is being held without bond at the Beaufort County Detention Center, according to the jail log.

Investigators would not say Tuesday whether Daise was the “person of interest” in the shooting deaths of Jeanine Mullen and her 4-year-old son, Waltfredo Davis-Mullen, at their home on Player Road on Sunday. Daise also is believed to be the father of the 2-year-old boy also injured in the shooting and taken to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston for treatment.

“He was arrested on drug charges, and that’s about all we can say right now,” said Cpl. Robin McIntosh, sheriff spokeswoman.

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McIntosh said officers executed a search warrant early Monday of Daise’s home on Burton Wells Road in Burton and discovered undisclosed quantities of crack cocaine and marijuana.

Investigators have yet to determine a motive for the shootings, she said.

Daise was sentenced to six years in prison on a 2001 aggravated-assault charge and has a pending criminal domestic violence charge from January, according to the jail log and court records.

Officers were called to the home at about 7 p.m. to reports of three gunshot victims and found Mullen and her two sons shot inside the home. A relative had stopped by the house that evening and discovered the victims.

Mullen, who worked as a kindergarten teaching assistant at Shanklin Elementary School in Beaufort, and Davis-Mullen were pronounced dead at the scene.

Mullen had two other sons, ages 11 and 13, who weren’t home at the time of the shooting.